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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24939094">i don't know how to tell you (i'm sorry, i'm sorry)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/gay_thot_writing/pseuds/gay_thot_writing'>gay_thot_writing</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>archives shuffle [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Archivist Sasha James, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Not!Martin Blackwood - Freeform, and in which i try to drown myself in commas, in which tim tries to make up for danny by taking care of everyone else, mentions of danny stoker, not!them - Freeform, tim study! tim study! TIM STUDY! TIM STUDY!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:27:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,383</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24939094</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/gay_thot_writing/pseuds/gay_thot_writing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Timothy Stoker is not a very patient man.</p><p>He'll freely admit this. He knows his strengths, and patience is not among them. So it should come as no surprise to him that he finds Martin getting on his nerves, more and more often after the Prentiss attack. He's honestly a little confused by it; there'd been no change in Martin's disposition, cool and collected as ever, but, for some reason, Tim just could no longer stand the man.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist &amp; Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood &amp; Sasha James &amp; Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood &amp; Tim Stoker, Sasha James &amp; Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist &amp; Tim Stoker, Sasha James &amp; Tim Stoker, mild tim/sasha</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>archives shuffle [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1772722</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>73</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>i don't know how to tell you (i'm sorry, i'm sorry)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title's not from anything, just thought it sounded cool.</p><p>you should probably read the other fics in this series if you want to get this, but it works on its own as well as long as you understand not!martin</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Timothy Stoker is not a very patient man.</p><p>He'll freely admit this. He knows his strengths, and patience is not among them. So it should come as no surprise to him that he finds Martin getting on his nerves, more and more often after the Prentiss attack. He's honestly a little confused by it; there'd been no change in Martin's disposition, cool and collected as ever, but, for some reason, Tim just could no longer stand the man.</p><p>He'd assumed it was just that, after being attacked twice by a woman who was more worm than person, his nerves were heightened and he was tense. Anyone could get impatient with others when they were in situations of intense pressure, and he and Martin were never all that close, anyways. He's pretty sure Martin came to Friday night drinks once, but he can't remember any of the details.</p><p>This doesn't really strike him as odd. He can't remember the details of most Friday night drinks he goes to. But Sasha has just been growing more and more paranoid as the days tick by and they don't find new information. He knows she trusts him; he's her confidant, her best friend. She tells him everything, and he gives her tea and pulls her back from the edge when the corkboard in her office stops looking like a cohesive tool for organizing clues and starts to creep into serial killer territory. </p><p>Timothy Stoker is not a very patient man, but he's always patient with Sasha. </p><p>Unless she's trying to convince him, yet again, to let her buy more red yarn. She always uses it on her corkboards when they slide over the line and he's put the kibosh on red yarn in the Archives. She won't use any other color, and he may not be her boss, but you have to respect the kibosh.</p><p>He's also patient with Jon, most of the time. His coworker may be a bit of a recluse, but he trusts him. They're friends. When the bags under Jon's eyes get a little too dark, and he starts staying too late to have reasonably gone home that night, Tim chastises him for it and makes him nap in the storage room. When he tries to enable Sasha's corkboard tendencies, Tim puts them both in separate corners of the Archives to think about what they've done. He refers to this as putting them in Tim Out, and both of them groan at the pun. Martin sends him an unreadable expression from behind his computer when these types of shenanigans go down.</p><p>Timothy Stoker is not a very patient man. But he knows how to carve out patience for people that need it, for people that he cares deeply about.</p><p>He's almost certain he used to be patient with Martin, but he can't for the life of him figure out why he would be. Martin is professional, but cold and brusque. He's not rude, but he isn't someone Tim cares about overmuch. He doesn't understand why he would go to extra effort for him.</p><p>Maybe he's just tense from Prentiss.</p><p>He puts a bit more effort into not snapping at Martin.</p><p>He doesn't take care of Martin, not like he does with Jon and Sasha, <strike>not like he did with Danny</strike>, but it feels wrong to just let him be. When Tim is out getting lunch for himself, if he grabs one for Jon and Sasha, he gets one for Martin as well. When he sends Jon home because his eyes are red and his skin is sunken, he checks if Martin shouldn't be heading out, too. When that one window breaks and the Archives become almost unbearably cold, he brings enough extra sweaters for everyone.</p><p>But Martin gets on his nerves, truly. He's cool and distant and acts as if the supernatural doesn't bother him, <em>can't</em> bother him. He acts as if Michael hadn't thrown him to the worms, as if Jane Prentiss had been nothing more than an inconvenience.</p><p>He doesn't deny the existence of the supernatural, but he denies it's danger. To Tim, this is worse. Considering the statements they receive, the subject matter, the state of the people who send them in, Tim refuses to stand by while someone else denies their stories. Martin undermines the danger again and again, and Tim is running out of ways not to yell at him for it.</p><p>Timothy Stoker is not a very patient man.</p><p>And so he has no patience for the feeling in his stomach when he goes to make tea for everyone. It feels quite like someone's dropped an anvil from his collarbones to his ankles, heavy and ugly and writhing in the very pit of his stomach. He makes tea anyways, but he doesn't know how Jon and Sasha take theirs. He leaves it plain.</p><p>He doesn't make one for Martin.</p><p>And he has no patience for the voice in the back of his mind that tries to get him to take care of himself too. He doesn't recognize the voice, <strike>can't remember the speaker</strike>, but he wants to be patient with them. He wants to listen to the voice, but he can take care of himself well enough, thank you. No strange mental voice has earned his patience so easily. He doesn't trust strange things, kind of on principle. </p><p>He steadfastly does not question his trust in Martin. </p><p>And, furthermore, he has no patience for the fact that <em>someone</em> is missing from his life and he <em>doesn't know who</em>. At first, he thinks it's just a mix of regular missing Danny and special So-You've-Just-Been-Attacked-By-Supernatural-Forces flavor missing Danny, but this someone has none of the telltale anger that missing Danny spawns in him. This... whoever it is, whenever he tries to think about them all he feels is grief. He misses them like they've died and there was nothing he could have done, like he's failed them but there's no enemy for him to go after. There's no anger. Only a hollow, heavy sadness. </p><p>It feels just like when he goes to make tea.</p><p>He tries not to think about it.</p><p>Timothy Stoker is not a very patient man, but he's patient with Sasha. </p><p>When she begins to explain, he doesn't doubt her, but he denies it anyways. He refuses to have lost another person to whatever this thing is. But the voice on the tapes matches the one in his head, asking Sasha if she'd like tea. Of course Tim doesn't know how Sasha likes her tea; he doesn't bring it to her! The man in the pictures matches the stranger in the breakroom, different from the Stranger that had been in Martin's place in nearly every way. Where the Martin Tim remembers is short and wiry, the man in the pictures is tall and fat. He's built in a way that makes him seem warm, soft, rather than intimidating, but he's still big. He's taller than Tim. While the thing that had pretended to be Martin had black hair and piercing green eyes, the man in the break room is ginger, freckled, with soft brown eyes. </p><p>Tim thinks about missing someone he can't remember. He asks if there's any chance they have it backwards, that the real Martin was that cold, polite, distant person, but even as he asks it he knows it's not possible. He knows that he failed Martin, that his solemn grief had been right. There was nothing he could have done, but he'd still failed him. He should have noticed, should have put it together. But then Sasha is ushering them into the breakroom and Tim is tired, so tired, of forcing patience with people, so he surges forwards and pulls Martin into a hug. It feels like coming home, like sitting under a weighted blanket. Sasha and Jon join the hug, and Tim whispers apologies into the shoulder of Martin's jumper, and Martin just holds them all closer like there's nowhere he'd rather be.</p><p>Timothy Stoker is not a very patient man, but he finds it easier and easier to be patient with his coworkers. And now that he's not the only one taking care of the group, Tim just may find it a bit easier to be patient with himself, too.</p>
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